One Idea to Change It All
by Leslie Elizabeth Skyward
Summary: During the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry has an idea that could change everything. But it comes with a price, a price that might just be his own life.


**AN: Hey guys! So this will be a multichapter alternative universe that starts during the Battle of Hogwarts... Next chapter will be uploaded later this week, I hope.**

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><p>"<em>Ron! <em>RON!"

Hermione's piercing screams were almost drowned out by the deafening sounds of the very walls of Hogwarts crashing around them like a rockslide. Harry skidded to halt, barely avoiding falling in the hole a fallen column had just made in the ground right in front of his feet. His glasses slid on his nose from the sudden stop.

His heart was beating against his ribcage harder than it had ever before. His blood was racing through his veins, his legs were shaking from exhaustion and he was utterly out of breath. Every sound seemed amplified in his ears: every crash, every explosion, every desperate scream. The dust from the collapsing brick walls and stairs floated in the air like fog, making Harry choke everytime he took a breath. He had trouble breathing, and sure as hell was unable to talk. So when Hermione managed to scream through that toxic dust entering her lungs, his blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins because only something horribly wrong could have enabled her to produce a sound like that.

Harry turned around. What he saw hit him worse than any curse, any accident, any fall he had ever taken in his whole seventeen years of life.

Hermione was kneeling near a pile of bricks and debris from a crashed wall, frantically pulling at something Harry couldn't see. Strangled out cries for Ron were coming out of her mouth in between hysteric sobs. She was pulling rock after rock from the pile. Her hand was noticeably cut open, but she did not care one bit and continued to dig in the mountain of debris.

Harry forced his feet to move, dreading what he would see when he'd reach Hermione. He was barely twenty feet away from her, but his walk to get to where she was seemed to take hours, if not days. He did not want to see what had put her in that state, but he _had _to see it.

Suddenly, Hermione stopped digging. For a second, she was still. She stood up and turned around, towards Harry. Her shoulders were shaking wildly from her uncontrolled sobs and tears were streaming down her cheeks, leaving wet trails on her dirt-covered skin. Behind her, at her feet, at the very spot where she had so desperately tried to dig in the rubble, was an arm. Ron's left arm.

It was barely visible, but it seemed to stick out of the pile of bricks and dust like a flag. A broken, defeated flag. Harry felt light headed. This could not be real. Ron and him had been through so many adventures and managed to come out alive and in one piece anyway. They had face death together so many times he had lost count, and they had lived to talk about it. Ron couldn't be dead, not like this, not crushed under the very walls of the place that had been a home to him for six years of his life. Deep down however, he knew just by seeing his mangled arm that life had left Ron's body for good.

Harry felt light-headed as the hot tears started streaming down his face. He leaned against the wall for support, just in time for him to avoid the beam of green light from the killing curse that was aimed straight to his head. It hit the spot where he was standing with an explosive sound, sending fragments of brick flying into the air, some landing on the ground and some other, in the skin of his face and neck.

Hermione's fingers closed around his arm in an iron tight grip and yanked brutally at it. The message was clear: they had to go. Now.

Harry took one last look at where his best friend was grossly buried, turned on his heels and ran. The screams of the Death Eaters, mixed with the agonizing ones of their allies trying desperately to give them time to escape, were getting closer by the second. There was no time to mourn.

He had no idea how long they ran, but Hermione and him only stopped at the top of the staircase leading to the left corridor of the seventh floor. In front of them, further down the corridor, the roof had caved in on itself. It was blocking the way.

They were trapped.

_Think, Harry, think! _

They couldn't turn around and go back down the stairs: Voldemort's followers would meet them half-way. They could climb the rubble until they reached the hole where the roof used to be, but where would they go next? The castle grounds were swarming with giants, werewolves and dementors, they had no chance of getting out alive that way. The screams and crashes were getting closer behind him.

Hermione was spinning on herself. She was looking at the walls, the floor, the roof, the corridor's door, everything she could get her eyes on that could potentially help them escape. She had the wild look of a chased beast in her eyes. Harry could see it clearly: like him, she could not find a way out.

"Bloody hell!" screamed Hermione, kicking part of a painting that had fallen from the walls sometime before.

Harry hung his head as his friend kept cursing over and over in a Ron-like fashion. They were done for.

A couple of hours before, they had seemed to be doing alright considering the circumstances. Those that sided beside Harry pretty evenly matched Voldemort's followers. For a while, the outcome of the battle taking place on the grounds of Hogwarts even seemed to favour them. Just when Harry thought they were getting the upper hand, however, the second part of Voldemort's so-called army came along: vampires, giants and werewolves, to name a few. Hogwarts' forces retreated back to the castle, and everything went awfully wrong from there.

And now, here they were, hours later, stuck in a half-destroyed hallway, between a fallen roof and a group of bloodthirsty Deatheaters. With no way out.

About to die.

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><p><strong>AN: So, there it is. Please review, tell me what you think so far! Chapter 2 will be uploaded at the end of this week or the beginning or the next one. <strong>

**- LES**


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